EU to offer Ukraine “association” agreement

Ukraine is to be offered an “association” agreement with the European Union, EU foreign ministers decided in Brussels yesterday, but the agreement does not go as far as offering actual membership of the EU.

The fine detail of the agreement will be hammered out at an EU-Ukraine summit meeting in the French town of Evian on 9 September, but the agreement is unlikely – following pressure from Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium – to include any roadmap towards the Ukraine eventually joining the EU.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s commissioner for external affairs and neighbourhood policy, said that progress had been made towards reaching agreement on a “new enhanced agreement” that went beyond the current partnership accord. The deal would not include agreement on visa-free travel, she insisted, but talks on visa facilitation could get underway “in parallel” with talks on the new pact.

“I think it was good to find a common solution on a package on an association agreement and a deep commitment on our side that goes beyond the co-operation and partnership agreement but at the same time does not prejudge the future but gives all the chances to the European aspirations of the Ukrainians,” she said.

But Ferrero-Waldner added that the Ukraine needed to “stabilise its interior politics” and that friction between the country’s president and prime minister needed to be resolved.

In a meeting with President Victor Yushchenko in Kiev on 21 July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany backed the signing of a trade pact between the Ukraine and the EU but that Germany was not ready to endorse Ukraine’s efforts to join the EU.

Ukraine’s hopes of joining the EU, and particularly NATO, are being undermined by Russia, which has promised a military response should the Ukraine or Georgia join the Western military alliance. There is also strong opposition to closer ties between Ukraine and the West among Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine.